Note to the uninitiated: The Society for Creative Anachronism is a worldwide educational, recreational group. Its members study and (to various extents) recreate medieval (interpreted broadly as 500-1650 AD) pastimes and society. Some parts are more historical, others more playful. What you see is not the embroidery or cookery part of the SCA. :)

For various safety reasons, SCA combat means dressing in full armor, armored gloves, and helmet (sometimes shield too), while whapping each other with weapons of duct tape-covered rattan instead of live steel. (There's also SCA medieval fencing and archery against targets and other combat arts that tend to use less simulated stuff. But that's not what we see here.)

Rattan swords, pikes, etc. break fingers a lot, and other bones sometimes, and of course other sports injuries occur. Fighting like this isn't a game for wimps.

Sca.org is where to go to find out more, like what SCA kingdom you live in. :)

I forgot to say that most colleges have an SCA group attached to them, though it's not a club found only or even mostly at colleges.

There are, or used to be, various medieval or fantasy groups which do have live steel combat, but I'm not sure what they are these days. I think maybe Dagorhir used to? Real liability problems in doing live steel events, obviously.

Looked more like whack-a-mole than a combat scene. But I still had the dictionary out from looking up precious, and found combat defined as "purposeful violent conflict meant to establish dominance over the opposition". It appears that happened.

No, Irene, don't feel bad. I think he probably was slightly injured but was also being overly dramatic - at least if his cohorts' blasé reactions were any guide. (Mrs. Meade can sometimes over empathize, if you know what I mean.)

Possibly. A well-delivered blow can really hurt. But the reason he immediately stopped fighting is that his opponent had delivered a killing blow--killing being defined as "if they had been using real swords and real armor".

They were fighting Florentine style and that opponent was pretty fast.

Meade, I felt less badly once I learned that the guys were SCA. Real medievalists don't like SCA.

But Mrs. Meade and I have the same problem of over emphatizing.

Example: I was driving down Farley Tuesday morning on my way toward University Avenue. Usual route through the Manski-signed lawns. A Prius was tailgating. A squirrel darted in front of my sensible vehicle. Squash. At first, I felt empathy. Then I realized it was a squirrel, and I was happy to have avoided a moment of Prius road rage.

No, Irene, don't feel bad. I think he probably was slightly injured but was also being overly dramatic - at least if his cohorts' blasé reactions were any guide. (Mrs. Meade can sometimes over empathize, if you know what I mean.)

That's one of the things, along with her wit, charm, and artistic flair, that endears Mrs Meade to us all. She talks tough, but there's a very big heart there.

My last roommate did that. Tough Jew. A typicle conversation in our house would go "What are you doing this weekend?" "I'm going to war!" and he would. He and hundreds, or even thousands of guys would travel to a location, put on their armor and wail on each other. It was civilized but fucking brutal. And he was one of the best roommates I've ever had - which is saying something because I've had pretty good luck with them usually.

The chances that either of these two will ever have sex with a woman are about equal to the chances that you'll look out the window and see a unicorn jumping over a rainbow.

That struck me as an idiotic thing to say. My roomy has two lovely kids and, having attended my share of battles with him and meeting a lot of the guys involved with it, I was struck by how "normal" they were. As a matter of fact, I'd say they were some of the most witty, industrious, and smart guys I've ever met. (My roomy works for the government and has credentials to do almost everything one can imagine, from international negotiations to disaster relief.) These guys come from all walks of life and ethnic backgrounds, and are really open and engaging in conversation. The kinds of guys women would be lucky to have. And I mean that:

The women would be the lucky ones.

And they were all guys the unsuspecting criminal would hate to encounter. My roomy was a sweetheart - I never felt threatened living with him and he was as easy with (what was at the time) my fractured self as I could ask for - though he was built like a spark plug, a top-ranked black belt in Karate, and could easily break anyone - and I mean anyone - with one hand. Nothing scared him and he liked that in me, too, though I'm just an old fashioned ghetto street fighter.

"The chances that either of these two will ever have sex with a woman are about equal to the chances that you'll look out the window and see a unicorn jumping over a rainbow."

As a matter of fact, based on the SCA people I have known, they're just as sexually active as everyone else. Silly boy needs to keep his mouth shut about things he knows nothing about, lest his prejudices lead him to public displays of asshattery.

Except that people are polite and well-groomed and often beautifully dressed. Also they shower, they camp in an organized fashion, they eat well and stay hydrated, there's a huge program list of classes and activities, there's Sunday Mass onsite if you can find it, there's a huge amount of medieval musical and dramatic presentations and plenty of dances, there's not much in the way of microphones and speakers or centralized arenas, they sell chocolate milk at the campground store, the nudity is reserved for one discreet swimming hole, and the druggies tend to stay out of sight. Yeah, exactly like Woodstock, except that it's reasonably pleasant to be around these tens of thousands of people.

There's lots of mud in certain places, though. Very clay-ey. Not fun to wash out of your clothes if your hem gets into it, or you fall in a patch.

pst314: I'll see that and raise you. There's an excellent chance they have better than average chances at having an active love life.

After all, unlike many "geeky" hobbies, the SCA (as well as other more or less equivalent reenactment groups that aren't about a modern military) involves lots of women, and lots of interaction with them in person.

A group I am in played for a wedding. Part of the entertainment, other than watching the morbidly obese bride nearly pass out from being squeezed into a too small period wedding dress, sweating profusely while standing around in the heat of July, was a battle between two SCA types, a husband and wife team. The wife hit the husband so hard with a mace that he was knocked silly and bled all over the place. I thought that was the perfect way for the newlyweds to begin their blissful life together. Symbolic, even.

And there were plenty of large men in utility kilts at the wedding. Since I was with the band there was no way I was going to comment upon anyone's apparel - that, plus the fact that those were some serious dudes, separated from bikers only by the century they chose to pretend to live in.

Go to Scotland - take a look at the size of the Claymores in museums there - that will give you an appreciation for what Scots could wield on the field of battle. Makes me thankful for modern ballistics and concealed carry.